I used Recollections brand 65 lb cardstock (the 8.5 x 11″pack of greens) I picked up from Michael’s for all of the green paper I cut out and a greenish-gold/tan color sheet from a DCWV Neutrals 12×12″ Cardstock Stack for the letters and the horseshoe.
I already had the green autumn doily on my corkboard. It was one of the first things I cut out when I got my silhouette.
I experimented with lowering the blade setting down to 2, but in some spots of the paper I was left with small uncut spots that I hit real quick with my exacto knife. I punched/poked out the tiny cut parts with a small screwdriver and then adhered them on to a pink backing to give the cutout more strength and contrast. I also experimented with placement. I like the top right ones the best. I also learned that Elmers glue is too wet (I got some puckering and wrinkling) when working with this paper, so I switched to using a CraftBond glue stick instead.
Want to Check Out More Silhouette Projects?
My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!
We decided to go out the day before to beat the crowds (we have a standing date night every Friday) and we went to our favorite Ramen place in Austin, Michi Ramen. The mr pointed out that they have roasted barely tea on their super cute, illustrated menus! I asked the waiter about it because I know I love the Korean version and he wrote it out in Korean with his finger on the table and brought me out a glass! Apparently barely tea in Japan is the same thing as barely tea in Korea! He lived in Korea for one year and we talked about how the culture is very food-centered. A common greeting in Korea is  “Have you eaten? ë°¥ 먹었니? or literally translated “Rice already eaten?” It used to trip up our waiter when the neighbor in front of his house would ask him that when he was learning Korean, so he would answer, “Yes, I had chicken/noodles/whatever he had eaten” that was not rice until he learned that it was equivalent to”How are you doing?” because back 3 generations or so ago food was scarce, so it was a way to show care. The Weekly Korean has a short podcast with an explanation. I didn’t grow up with this saying because only English was spoken in my home, for the fear that I would have a Korean accent. I learned how to read and write Korean later in life. AND cook Korean food! If you’re interested in learning Korean: Timothy Ferris turned me on to Ryan Estrada’s “Learn to read Korean in 15 minutes” illustrated guide during his talk at last year’s SXSW where he was talking about his favorite tools for cooking.  I attended all the food talks during the interactive portion, of course!
I get the same thing every time I eat at Michi. The dipping ramen! It comes with a reduction of the ramen broth and thick Chinese-like noodles. I sub the thick pork slices for fishcake (kamaboko) because it’s too much for me to eat even in two sittings, which usually happens anyway. I add the ajitama (pickled) soft-boiled egg and this time I tried the pickled bamboo shoots (a win!). I usually eat all the noodles while I’m there and get some noodles to go with my “lonely broth” and have a nice lunch the next day with shredded seaweed and an egg on top.
Since we went out on Thursday, I went grocery shopping and we had our Valentine’s Day meal at home: peach & mango salsa & tortilla chips, Â lobster mac ‘n cheese, flatbread & strawberry cheesecake.
I cut out some vinyl on my silhouette to decorate the master bathroom, so this happened:
I’m terrible about figuring out something to make or give to my mister, so usually it’s a frustrating holiday for me, but I saw these hello cards in the Silhouette store and I couldn’t pass them up. I had laurels downloaded already and a script font, but for a quick click of the button, I had the image all set up and ready for cutting, so the project probably took me less than 15 minutes including installation! It’s 12″ tall  x 20″ long and I’m happy with how it turned out. He got a kick out of it, (I heard him laughing from the living room when he saw it), so I was happy, too. I cut out the matching “Hello Beautiful” and will probably put it on the mirror later this week.
I had broken my large vase earlier in the year (and just replaced it, but he was unaware, so he brought home a bouquet of roses in this neat vase that’s a longgg oval! You know I’m going to etch it, right? I’ll probably just make a stencil vinyl mask (so reverse of the tutorial in the link.)
To sum it up, this was the best Valentine’s Day that I can remember, ever! It was so good getting to spending time with friends and my mister! I love you guys!
I had fun making these and spreading the love for Valentine’s Day. I met with Mazzi Peled of Latika Soap for happy hour early this week and was able to give her one. Â I accidentally spilled some of my pink sugar perfume on it, and she was asking me “What is that smell coming out of your purse!” so I ended up giving her a scented valentine! What a happy accident since she loves the smell. We have similar philosophies about formulating & designing, so I love getting to chat with her.
Another way I choose to spread love is through teaching. Each fall I take on an adult intern at feto soap. They usually are on their way to starting their own bath & body business, but want some help learning techniques and production from an established business.
Last year, Kelly Darby of Lucy Kat Soaps was my fall intern. I taught her how to make soap & bath bombs, and she helped me package my products during the fall of 2013. We worked out an arrangement of both in-studio and take-home tasks (like entering emails into a spreadsheet & some packaging duties) because she lives in N. Round Rock and has two young children at home. She was super-organized about her babysitting schedule, so would let me know a week ahead when her studio or take-home task availability was. She also helped me at shows when she was available!
Unbeknownst to us, we had a couple of interests and people in common, like Taylor from Nothing But a Pigeon, a love for yoga and NPR. When she’s not busy chasing after her little ones, she’s working at a yoga studio part-time (like I did!) while she makes her fabulous party favors.
I had the pleasure of having both of them over for a pre-Valentine’s Day
lunch complete with chocolates and champagne! Since I didn’t want us all getting tipsy, I made a variation of Profanity Salmon for us while we snacked on the goat cheese and noshes Kelly brought over. I was too busy eating them to get a picture!
This past Christmas, my Mister gifted me a Silhouette Cameo. To learn how to use it, I joined the Silhouette Challenge that Lauren Lanker of the Thinking Closet started. Every month you either blog or take a picture of the project you made with the machine that fits the challenge. Here are all my 2014 challenge posts so far:
I got my first custom vinyl car decal order from a friend of mine, Manue of Pretty Kiku last week. (even before I had announced that I was starting custom sign business. It was like she knew!) She wasn’t sure what size she wanted, so I sent her some mockups to give her an idea, and had her measure to see how big she would like the decal to be.
I had to make a tiny thank you card to go with it, of course!
This is a great video that shows you how to apply a decal to your car:
We decided to trade for a pair of earrings I had started eyeing at the Blue Genie Art Bazaar. She’s sending me these: Style #4. I love black and gold right now, so they are perfect! I had a hard time choosing between styles #2 and #4 because I’m really into floral motifs, but it’s the one with most gold, so I went for it. My hair is black, so I usually like to wear lighter earrings for some contrast if my hair is not up.
Hello friends! Every second Monday of the month I will be posting about my Silhouette Challenge Project! January’s theme is organizing, which I have already started on, so I jumped in.
TL;DR version: I now have a Silhouette Cameo & can cut out beautiful vinyl labels to organize my home.
When I first got the itch to label my things around 1997, I started out with a Brother Labeler because it prints laminated labels which is great for things that get touched a lot or things that might get wet. At the time I didn’t own a printer or working home computer, so I wasn’t able to do any home desktop publishing like when I rocked a dot matrix printer back in the day with my Print Shop Plus or whatever it was called.
Eventually I bought a computer and inkjet printer and let’s say in 2003 or so I discovered inkjet label paper in both white and clear. The clear was awesome, because it made it look like your label was printed right on the object you were labeling! I used it on my bulk food canisters with a cool bar code font. Unfortunately the label paper wasn’t water-resistant, so the labels did not hold up over time and streaked when they got wet. Â I printed tons of labels to organize my soap business items on my white label paper. I would cut up half-page shipping labels down to whatever label size I needed or use the whole label depending on the container.
The Ikea bookcase had drawers with the cut to size labels and the buckets with the half page labels.
I accidentally bought many, many boxes of UPS half-sheet label paper from someone on ebay years ago, so I would have to cut off the edge of the paper that said “for UPS use only*”! I should have read twice before I clicked once! I’m still going through that stash with probably less than a dozen pages left. I used it to practice making a “kiss cut” for stickers on my Silhouette. If you have some laying around and are interested in making stickers with here, the settings I use for UPS label paper are: Speed: 8, Thickness: 7, Blade: 1
These were the result of my many cut tests (not the kiss cut!) though I finally got it down to where you peel the stickers right off of the paper instead of these separate ones! *disclaimer: I’m not saying to order UPS label paper from UPS to make stickers… I made a mistake in my ordering, so it’s material that I have on hand that I didn’t mind experimenting with.
Fast forward to 2006 – I bought my first color laser printer and somewhere along the way, I discovered the existence of die-cut label paper that comes in more than Avery brand full or half sheets! Here’s my collection:
My label stock is mostly to label the beauty products I make. The 1.8″ label paper has a wide top & bottom border, so I started using it to label my plastic bins (mostly shoebox size, but some 16 qt and larger) that I use to organize just about everything. I make a lot of different items, so I need to be able to find things relatively quickly. I use a lot of this size for a couple of different items, so I have a bunch of this “waste” label paper around that I keep to label my bins. I like that they stick on really well, but let me remove them (they have regular adhesive on the back of them, not removable.
Because of the projects I want to complete with the help of my Silhouette, I needed to pull out my acrylic paints and sewing kit, so I decided to label those too.  This tackle box holds all my acrylics & brushes. It was originally full of paint, clay, sewing notions & a bunch of other craft treasures Kai gifted to me when he moved to China.
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I tackled the sorting out of my sewing box (a big metal toolbox) the next day and combined the Mister’s, Kai’s and my sewing notions all into my toolbox after sorting everything into baggies. Thread, needles, lace, patches, etc. I was originally just going to label it with the words “sewing kit” but I thought it would be cute to have the keep calm poster on the side. I downloaded the free Keep Calm font and traced an image of a spool of thread in Silhouette Studio instead of a crown at the top.
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I’m also putting the Silhouette to use around the kitchen, of course! Here are a few of the things I have labeled so far:
I made sure to save the file so I can use consistent fonts and sizes for each area of my house or if I need to cut them out again.
Want to Check Out More Silhouette Projects?
My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!
I’ve really appreciated the time off I’ve taken after the holiday & Â have been doing lots of personal crafting after having a nice rest. This is a free printable from C.R.A.F.T. made by Vanessa at the Tried & True blog. I’ve “known” Vanessa for probably 10 years now from an online business forum (The Switchboards) and we reconnected on instagram recently.
I wanted to see if my Silhouette Cameo could mimic chalkboard art with the sketch pen feature because I have some ideas for how I want to decorate for Valentine’s, so I traced the printable with a copper metallic pen on black cardstock. I’m happy with how it turned out. I might sketch some smaller versions for my smash book(s). Marshall’s had them on sale for $5.99 yesterday (I’ve seen them for $12 at Target), so I picked up one for myself + one for my biz. I’m collecting bits of paper to put in them and might do a year in review starting from December 2013 and going backwards.
These are just some of the things I’ve been cutting out of with my machine – mostly paper and vinyl that I had on hand.
…..and of course I cut out cards to tuck into my online orders, like for my bath bomb of the month club.
 
 
 
